Monday, 25 May 2015

My father Alex Efthim was a Captain in the Army Air Corps,
combat intelligence, Pacific Theater, World War II. He always taught me
in any peace march to find the veterans and walk behind them. I always
have. My father was a member of Veterans for Peace,
and his idea of peace was about human rights and justice. So is mine. My friend Michael McPhearson now runs
Veterans for Peace; he served in the Gulf War. For a while, Michael lived in New Jersey while his wife Deborah Jacobs ran ACLU-NJ. Now they're in
St. Louis, and after Mike Brown was killed, were on the ground in
Ferguson. This is Michael's Facebook status of a couple days ago, and I
find it about perfect. I hope you find
a way today to honor those who never came ho me, and to let your concern for living veterans move to action on their behalf.
This is Michael

I wanted to get this down before I forget his name. I just met a Black
Vietnam combat vet named Milton. He saw me walking and called out, "Hey
young man are you a veteran?" He was so enthusiastic, shaking my hand.
He told me where he served, who with etc like
we vets and service members do when we meet. I told him my service
credentials. He went on to tell me he always wants to thank veterans
because he was not thanked and was treated bad when he returned home. I
told him about Veterans For Peace, gave him my card
and a brochure.

We talked about how we are sent to serve and thrown away when we come
home. We agreed on how we are lied to about why we are sent to war. He
called the politicians professional liars being paid to lie.

As I was about to go, he told me he was going to take the brochure and
place it on the bulletin board at the shelter where he is staying. Until
that moment I had no idea this enthusiastic, smiling and energetic
veteran was homeless. I asked him his name again,
we shook hands in what I'll call the Unity fashion, we hugged and I set
off feeling very emotional.

I'm tired of meeting homeless people. We have homelessness because of
greed, indifference and a depraved social structure. I am particularly
hurt when I meet homeless veterans. This one was such a wonderful happy
man. There is no excuse for this. The U.S. is
waging wars around the world to the tune if a trillion dollars a year.
Killing innocent people in the name of freedom and discarding many sent
to do these dirty deeds. What other word is there for this other than
evil?

Call me naive, idealistic or foolish. Whatever, but God(dess) did not put us here to do this. I won't accept it.
If you see me this Memorial Day, don't wish me a happy one
and don't thank me for my service. Reflect on how to stop this madness.
Figure out something large or small, grand or minute you can do and then
do it. That's a real way to honor those who
have died in war. Peace is possible, but we must be wiling to
sacrifice and belive in it just as much as it appears we believe in
killing and chaos.
[emphasis added]

Friday, 15 May 2015

After the Elections, an Even More Divided Britain

London:
We expected a landmark election but not quite like this. We thought it
would signal the end of two-party politics in Britain and herald a new
dawn – of continental style coalition politics. Instead, the
Conservatives scored a surprising victory, added two dozen seats to
their 2010 tally and will now form a majority government. And in the
process, they decapitated all their opponents, from Lib Dems to Labour
to UKIP – Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and Nigel Farage have all resigned and
have been replaced by women. Cameron is now truly the last man
standing, with just 22% of the electorate voting Conservative (around
36% of those who voted, a slight increase since 2010). The Conservatives
frightened Lib Dem and Labour voters with the spectre of a Miliband
administration in the pockets of the SNP, and UKIP did the rest, leaving
the Conservatives in prime position. They played the ‘fear’ card well.

Does this election teach us anything we didn’t already know? What are its implications for Britain, Europe and the wider world?

For Britain
A kingdom increasingly divided. The Tory government’s writ hardly
runs in Scotland where Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party won an
unprecedented 56 of 59 seats, decimating Labour north of the border and
ensuring the latter’s defeat. The SNP – running on an
anti-austerity, anti-Trident nuclear submarine and anti-war programme –
captured a stunning 50 seats more than in 2010. There’s only a single
representative of each of the three main parties in Scotland now. The
Conservatives and Labour are English parties with a toe-hold in Wales;
Westminster no longer rules the hearts or minds of Scotland.

But even more than this, the election shows disillusionment with and
distance from the politics of Westminster – a 66% turnout despite an
apparently more open field than in any previous election. Votes for the
SNP, UKIP and Greens are votes against the political establishment of an
increasingly fragmented United Kingdom. The Green Party and UKIP,
between them, garnered over 5 million votes but ended up with just 2
seats. Electoral reform is surely back on the agenda both better to
reflect popular opinion and restore the credibility and
representativeness of Parliament.
Cameron’s second term as premier is going to be tougher than the
first. His backbenchers, who rebelled more frequently than at any time
since World War II, want to cut the budget deficit while handing out tax
cuts. Conservative Eurosceptics, like John Redwood, want a referendum
on EU membership as soon as possible, something Cameron promised to hold
by the end of 2017. And he has no moderating Lib Dems in a coalition to
assist him. Scottish nationalism has been boosted and will likely lead
to demands for another referendum on independence unless Cameron quickly
delivers ‘Devo [lution] Max [imum]’ – full fiscal autonomy.

War on the poor and vulnerable
Leaked Conservative Party planning documents during the election
campaign suggested Tories are planning £12 billion of government
spending cuts while promising an additional £8 billion every year for
the National Health Service (NHS). Having already imposed savage cuts on
welfare and disability benefits since 2010, somewhat tempered by the
Lib Dems, the war on the vulnerable in British society may now be waged
without restraint. Between 2010-2014, public sector spending cuts led to
job losses of around 900,000, mainly in the north of England where the
Labour vote is strongest. Across the country, one million people use
food banks for basics such as baby food. The social security budget was
hit with a cut of up to £25 billion – affecting children, working
parents and the disabled. It is unsurprising that shoplifting of food
has gone up, according to the police. According to the Child Poverty
Action Group, if current government policies persist, the number of
children living below the poverty line is due to rise by over a million
to 4.7 million by 2020. Already noted by the OECD as one of the most
unequal societies in the West, the new Tory government is set to preside
over even greater social polarisation.

The pressure on the Cameron government to fight hard to renegotiate
Britain’s relationship with the EU opens up the risk of losing its most
important trading partner. The rise of anti-EU nationalism across
Europe, of which UKIP is symptomatic, threatens the European project.
All of the main parties campaigned on the issue of curbing EU
immigration. This has sharpened nationalism in the UK too – handing
Scotland to the SNP and 13% of all votes cast to UKIP. Ultimately,
however, Britain is a core member of the EU and central to the project:
it is highly unlikely to withdraw. But the uncertainty and instability
caused by such a controversial and emotional issue undermines Britain’s
position in Europe and the world and, more significantly, distracts the
government from major issues at home, especially the re-building of
Britain’s infrastructure and constructing millions of affordable new
houses in and around the biggest cities where demand is greatest. This
is also central to the growth in productivity that the Conservatives
claim is essential to reversing spending cuts by 2018.

Global impact
Foreign policy does not shift quickly and Britain’s is unlikely to
change appreciably, despite claims of the death of the ‘special
relationship’ with the United States. Britain, notwithstanding cuts to
military spending, remains the US’s most willing partner in military
interventions in the Middle East and Africa. Cameron was, with French
president Nicolas Sarkozy, the initial and enthusiastic champion of
military strikes and regime change, under cover of humanitarian
intervention, in Libya, now a failed state, a third of whose population
has abandoned the country as ISIS takes root. Britain supports Saudi
suppression of Bahraini uprisings against oppression and is now building
a naval base there next door to the US 5th fleet. The
illegal Saudi bombing of Yemen has been conducted with US and British
logistical support. The City of London remains a global financial
centre, Britain still has a permanent seat on the UN Security Council,
and is at the heart of an increasingly global NATO. Its imperial
mindset, despite decolonisation, has yet to disappear.